Under the U.S. Constitution, President-elect Donald Trump will be term-limited after he returns to the White House. The 22nd Amendment, ratified in 1951, states, "No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice."
The last U.S. president to serve more than two terms was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was elected in a landslide in 1932 and was serving his fourth term when he died in office on April 12, 1945. But the 22nd Amendment has limited post-1940s presidents — from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama — to two terms.
In an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on Friday, however, attorney Berin Szóka lays out some of the tricks that Trump might resort to in the hope of remaining in the White House after January 20, 2029.
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One possible option, Szóka warns, is Trump trying to run for vice-president in 2028 — and another is Trump and his MAGA allies trying to change the rules.
"Timothy Snyder, professor of history at Yale and the most influential American scholar on authoritarianism, believes that Trump 'will seek to change the system so that he can remain in power until death,'" Szóka explains. "Actually, he can work within the system. The only constraints on his ability to remain in office are political, not legal. Trump has now won the Republican nomination three times — the first time taking 58 percent of delegates, and the second and third times without even having to fight a primary. His grip on the party has only solidified with his latest victory."
Szóka continues, "The 2028 ticket will be whoever he chooses. If he says it should be (Vice President-elect JD) Vance — or someone even more pliant or electable than Vance — and himself, why wouldn't the GOP rubber-stamp his decision? Why couldn't he find someone willing to run for the presidency, only to give it up immediately?"
Szóka emphasizes that anyone who finds the idea of Trump trying to remain in the White House after finishing a second term far-fetched should consider his efforts to stay in power after losing to now-President Joe Biden in 2020.
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Trump, Szóka warns, "will do whatever it takes to stay in power until he dies."
"No law or constitutional restriction on its own will stop him, a lesson driven home repeatedly during the Trump years," the attorney argues. "Norms and laws and constitutional provisions are only as good as the people willing to enforce them. If Trump is determined to be a candidate in the 2028 election, the only thing that will ensure he doesn't get another term is if he loses so clearly and decisively that even he can't hold on to power by lying about the election and inciting violence."
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Berin Szóka's full article for The Bulwark is available at this link.